What Next?
LeAnn posted this blog on Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 at 12:16 am
What Next?
I think I might be glad to see the end of August. I hate to see the days getting shorter and shorter, but August just has not been a particularly good month.
My kitty Jack was killed. Randy had an eye infection. I’ve got a bad case of poison ivy on both arms. We had a torrential rain storm that dumped six inches on the area and washed out the dirt along the foundation of our house (not to mention roads and culverts).
And then Randy cut hay early last week. As soon as he cut the hay, the sky turned cloudy. It never did rain the rest of the week, just stayed cloudy so the hay did not dry very well or very quickly.
On Saturday, the hay was finally dry enough that if we got a little sunshine after it was turned over, it might be all right to bale. So, Randy hooked the rake up to the 460, and when he was almost finished with the field . . .the draw bar fell off the tractor.
Just like that. No warning. Boom. The draw bar dropped off the tractor. The bolt and bracket holding it on must have been just worn out.
Randy was able to get my brother’s tractor to bale with. We were planning on leaving the third of the field he did not get raked because the west end of the field had a lot of fleabane and other weeds in it anyway. The front half of the third we figured maybe we could just pick up loose and put in the barn and feed it out that way.
Sunday after church I went out with the wheelbarrow to get some of the loose hay for Isabelle and Kajun, and in the sunlight, as I picked up a forkful of hay, I could see that mold spores were puffing out of it.
Kajun and Isabelle do not need moldy hay. I do not need to feed moldy hay. And our chickens do not need moldy hay for bedding.
So much for that. The rest of the hay is staying out in the field.
Saturday evening, after the debacle with the draw bar and getting the hay dry and getting the field baled, I went to a tractor pull to take pictures for the newspaper. It was while I was on the way home that . . .I blew a brake line in truck. That’s the fifth brake line I’ve blown. One minute I’ve got brakes. The next minute the brake peddle goes to the floor and the truck is not stopping very well.
Monday morning I drove — carefully, very carefully — into town and figured I could leave the truck at the repair shop all day so they could fix the brake lines. The newspaper office is only a couple of blocks from the repair shop.
Fortunately, they were able to repair the brake lines Monday so that was one good thing.
Monday morning, however, Randy woke up with a sore throat. He was thinking it was just allergies but decided to stay home, and later on in the day, he decided it wasn’t allergies but that he had a virus. As the day wore on, he felt sicker and more tired and was sneezing a lot and coughing a little bit.
And, oh yes, August has been exceptionally hot and humid and sticky, meaning that the ragweed is growing gangbusters. That may be why my arms reacted so badly to the poison ivy. Lots of allergens in the air, and I was already primed for a skin reaction. . . My right arm is to the point where it is raw and the skin is beginning to peel. It looks like I’ve got an extensive burn on my arm. My left arm is still blistering.
And oh my, but don’t I *still* feel sorry for myself.
LeAnn R. Ralph
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